October 27, 2023
Dear Patriots,
Seemingly from nowhere a man emerged to become the U.S. Speaker of the House. He was elected unanimously by Republicans.
Call us crazy, but we are giving credit for this to divine intervention.
The first act of then Speaker Designate Johnson was to gather the Republican caucus and pray.
We beseech you to add this man to your prayers. He will be besieged by evil and negativity from The Swamp. Pray that he be protected, made strong and wise.
With a backdrop of heartbreaking situations in the USA and the world, we offer a little respite of better news.
1- Learn more about Speaker Johnson here. Of course, it was more than just luck that won this day.
Mike Johnson lucked into speaker job — but he has talent to pull it off
QUOTE: Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the new House speaker, has pulled off what no one thought possible: He swept past the bad blood, the ego-driven personalities and ideological divisions among House Republicans and won a unanimous vote of his conference.
The Goldilocks candidate even surprised Donald Trump. Trump predicted Monday, "There's only one person" who could unite the party: Jesus Christ. "If Jesus came down and said, 'I want to be speaker,' he would do it. Other than that, I haven't seen anybody that can guarantee it."
There are famously Five Families warring inside the House Republican tent: the Tea Party-influenced House Freedom Caucus, the conservative Republican Study Committee, business-oriented Chamber of Commerce types, the moderate Republican Governance Group and the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.
So how did Johnson get them temporarily to agree on electing him?
He belongs to the Freedom Caucus and used to chair the Republican Study Committee, nailing down his right flank.
His leadership position as House Republican Conference vice chairman meant he had personal relationships with many moderate members, who liked his low-key style and his willingness to listen to them. And he has demonstrated an interest in the details of legislation, impressing other members expert in tax, budget and defense issues.
It also didn't escape the notice of MAGA members that he had served on the defense team in Donald Trump's first impeachment trial in 2020.
But I've spoken to both friends and skeptics of Johnson who say they won't bet against him.
One lesson of politics is that everyone who gets to the top has usually traveled there by one of two roads — one labeled talent and one labeled luck. The secret to success, the late Rep. Edward Pattison of New York told me, is: "Never let anyone know which one of those roads you took to where you are now."
2- This is such good news. No more worry over the global warming and climate change, right? Take that item OFF your worry list!!
The Latest On Global Warming Is ... There Is No Global Warming
QUOTE: A new study out of Norway is exactly what was needed to shut down the climate alarmists. Its findings show that man has not set fire to his home planet.
Right from the top, in the abstract not 10 lines into the study, the authors get to the point.
"Using theoretical arguments and statistical tests we find," the researchers say, "that the effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be strong enough to cause systematic changes in the temperature fluctuations during the last 200 years."
In other words, our words, the greenhouse effect is so weak that it should be sidelined as an argument.
From there, the bad news only gets worse for priests of the climate religion.
"Even if recent recorded temperature variations should turn out to deviate from previous variation patterns in a systematic way it is still a difficult challenge to establish how much of this change is due to increasing man-made emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases."
Of course the climate zealots won't like the study. Well, they also won't like another new paper, this one from University of Alabama in Hunstville climate scientists Roy Spencer and John Christy, who have submitted Urban Heat Island Effects in U.S. Summer Surface Temperature Data, 1880-2015 to a science journal.They believe they have demonstrated "that, not only do the homogenized ('adjusted') dataset not correct for the effect of the urban heat island (UHI) on temperature trends, the adjusted data appear to have even stronger UHI signatures than in the raw (unadjusted) data." According to Spencer, "the bottom line is that an estimated 22% of the U.S. warming trend, 1895 to 2023, is due to localized UHI effects," and that "the effect is much larger in urban locations."
In other words, our words, the temperature record we're expected to accept without question is a sham – an argument we've been making for more than 20 years.
After so many decades, we finally realize that nothing will make these people – that's right, these people – shut up. They will continue swearing that every weather anomaly is caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and go on recalculating their end-of-the-world schedules – in the same way that doomsday cults swear that they just got the day of doom wrong and then double down on the loco. For this, we will be all the poorer, financially and even intellectually.
3- Every baby saved is good news for the world.
Georgia Supreme Court Upholds State's 'Heartbeat' Abortion Law
QUOTE: The Supreme Court of Georgia voted 6–1 on Oct. 24 to uphold the state's six-week abortion ban.
The lawsuit against the ban was one of many nationwide that have been adjudicated in the wake of restrictive abortion laws that have followed the U.S. Supreme Court's June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade. In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court found that there was no right to abortion in the U.S. Constitution and returned the regulation of abortion to the states.
The Supreme Court of Georgia's new ruling in State of Georgia v. SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective undid a lower court decision that voided parts of the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, which Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed into law in 2019.
The legislation prohibited doctors in the state from performing abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, except in certain situations such as rape, incest, or a medical emergency.
Specifically, the statute outlawed abortion procedures "if an unborn child has been determined ... to have a detectable human heartbeat." Pro-choice advocates criticized the law, saying that many women aren't even aware they are pregnant at the six-week mark.
4- Accountability for hurting youth is always a goal to move toward.
Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Sued by 42 States for Harming Young People with Addictive Facebook, Instagram Features
QUOTE: Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, formerly Facebook, is being sued by 42 U.S. states in multiple lawsuits accusing the tech giant of harming young people's mental health with addictive Facebook and Instagram features. The states, however, have not filed a similar complaint against the Chinese-owned app TikTok, which has shown itself to be a danger to young people.
In one lawsuit, 33 states accuse Meta of knowingly designing Facebook and Instagram features that addict children and teens to the platforms. In addition to the 33 states, nine other attorneys general are filing suits in their states, bringing the total number of states taking action against Meta to 42, according to a report by Associated Press.
The complaint, filed against Meta Platforms Inc. in federal court in California, claims the company consistently collects data on children under 13 years of age, without their parents' consent, which is a violation of federal law. It also accuses the tech giant of damaging young people's mental health and contributing to the youth mental health crisis.
As Breitbart News reported, the app, owned by a hostile foreign country, is known as being harmful to young people, as it encourages kids to participate in trends that are dangerous and life-threatening — with some instances even resulting in death.
TikTok is also widely viewed as a national security threat, and an entity that has meddled in U.S. elections.
Some states, however, are trying to take action against the Chinese app. In May, Montana became the first U.S. state to ban TikTok when Governor Greg Gianforte (R) singed legislation that he said would protect the residents of his state from "the Chinese Communist Party."
5- It's a drop in a big bucket but, it is still fun to see the rich make very bad investments in social fads.
Not Even Our Overlord Can Save Bud Light! Bill Gates Losing MILLIONS After Huge Investment Into Anheuser-Busch
QUOTE: Bill Gates probably thought he was just gonna make an easy profit here ... nope.
Ranked as Forbes' No. 7-richest person in the world, Bill Gates has been losing a crapload of money ever since he decided to place a massive investment into Anheuser-Busch, according to financial news site Benzinga.
During 2023's fiscal second quarter, Gates bought more than 1.7 million shares of Anheuser-Busch InBev, the makers of scandal-ridden beers Bud Light and Budweiser. But apparently not even the overlord himself can save the tainted company, as they continue to spiral down the toilet from their Dylan Mulvaney nonsense and allegedly blatantly hurting their Clydesdales — and it's reportedly resulting in Gates getting clipped himself.
Purchasing them through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, Gates' 1,703,000 AB InBev shares are valued at around $100 million. Doing the math of those shares and putting them together with how Anheuser-Busch's stock prices and sales have utterly crumbled in 2023, Gates has lost over a whopping $6 million with his investment, Benzinga reported.
The man can't even save a beer company, but somehow he thinks he can save the world — straight comedy.
6- Here is your good read for the weekend. A little history of a man you may not know about and his gift of optimism.
His optimism has been proven to be worthwhile and correct time after time.
Jane Shaw Stroup at Jane Takes On History at Substack
Julian Simon, Vindicated Again
QUOTE: Each year, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has a dinner in Washington, D.C., honoring the economist Julian Simon, who died in 1998. Simon was a rare optimist in the fields of population and natural resources. He disagreed with most environmentalists of his day (especially in the 1980s through 1990s). They feared passionately that growing population would overwhelm agriculture and industry and that the world would run out of natural resources such as oil and minerals.
Instead, Simon thought that more births are a good thing and was sure that resources would not disappear. His upbeat views were widely disparaged.
Ecologist Garrett Hardin called him "Dr. Pangloss," compared him to a "fast change artist at a county fair," and said he persuaded people with "sleight of hand." Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, and a leading alarmist wrote (along with his wife, Anne) that Simon was "the leader of a space-age age cargo cult" of economists and a "fringe character." They also called his qualifications those of a "specialist in mail-order marketing."
Today Simon's views are beginning to be appreciated. The CEI dinner honored two authors working in the tradition of Simon, Marian L. Tupy and Gale L. Pooley for their book Superabundance. It reveals in a distinctive way how prosperous the world has become.
Now, let me refer briefly to Superabundance, the book featured at the recent CEI dinner. It is hefty (547 pages) and it covers the history of how the world has achieved "superabundance." Tupy and Pooley define superabundance as a time "when the abundance of resources grows at a faster rate than population increase." We're in that time.
7- Take a deep breath and go for a walk. To make it extra worthwhile, take a child you love along.
Why Neighborhood Walks Are Better (and Easier) With Kids
QUOTE: As wellness writers the internet over continue to urge — and sometimes beg — readers to make walks a non-negotiable part of their everyday routine, various modes of walking have come into the fray. Like super walks. Or German walks. Or "hot girl walks."
It's all great — call your walk whatever you want it. If it gets you away from the desk, it's good for your body and brain. But walks can be great for the soul too, helping us re-cultivate our relationship to the outside world. Walking around a neighborhood invites inevitable observations and impressions.
All of these (the good, bad and ugly...I was clawed by a dog on today's morning amble) have the capacity to add color to your day, remind you of something or inspire you and hopefully tether you to a community.
Sometimes, though, it's hard to get the habit off the ground. And when you do head out, it's tempting to just take your phone out of your pocket and get it over with. But that's a surefire way to miss out on all the fun. Which is why we recommend bringing a kid along.
Not just any kid. Hopefully, a kid that belongs to you, or someone you love, or someone who pays you to look after them. Try to get in the habit of going for a walk with this little person, and watch how it'll improve (a) your relationship with the activity and (b) your overall ability to "savor" the world around you.
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PRAY for divine intervention. PRAY for Speaker Johnson. PRAY for protection of Israel.
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Hold Fast,
Defending The Republic
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